And He Was Brooks Hansen's Roommate?
That's Gotta Be a Sitcom Pitch

As Charles McGrath prepares to leave the New York Times Book Review, he seems to be getting plenty of love from his comrades at the Sunday magazine. This weekend he profiles his buddy (well, okay, that's laying it on a bit thick) Chang-Rae Lee:

Lee is probably the most unwriterly writer I know. He's cheerful and well adjusted, a homebody, a 10-handicap golfer and a serious foodie. He seldom goes to book parties, and he doesn't follow the literary gossip. In the darker, more invidious corners of literary New York, it is sometimes said of him, as it is of a few others thought to be unnaturally nice, that his apparent happiness and lack of problems must be a coverup for something really messed up.

Not as far as I could tell, when I met him briefly a little over three years ago; his calm contentment struck me as the real deal. McGrath found some sources who have their theories on how Lee can write so convincingly about profoundly alienated protagonists while living what appears by all accounts to be not just a well-adjusted but deeply enjoyed life; I've got some thoughts about still waters running deep but wouldn't dream of thinking I have enough insight to make anything more than wild speculation. And while I don't know much about the new novel that prompted this profile, I've long admired his subtle manipulations of genre in Native Speaker and A Gesture Life. His thoughts on that experimentation: "I'm trying to figure out my own kind of story which, of course, I never will. I don't think I ever will. I hope I never do. Once I do, that's death."